Too Soon

When I was 7 my mother decided to educate me about sex. She bought an illustrated book and read it to me. I was horrified. I'm not sure why she was so eager to sexualize me. By the age of six I had already had three major unnecessary surgeries and presumed I wouldn't live very long. By age 12 at summer camp I remember that I was hoping to make it to age 16, if I was lucky.

At ages 8-10 I was more interested in breeding gerbils and had 30 of them in my bedroom along with a 10 gallon fish tank. I read about gerbils dolphins and fish. My mother told me those were not books and dragged me off to Mr. Brown the psychologist where I had to read aloud from some stupid derogatory book I refused to read. Fiction was her definition of books but never the books I wanted to read.

I did love Sounder and The Cay, Island of the Blue Dolphins, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, The Dream Watcher, including a book written by a classmates mom. Tino – A Puerto Rican boy brings home a fertilized egg, hatches a chick and tries to raise a chicken at home in Spanish Harlem. My mom was so jealous! I couldn't win. Her narrative said I couldn't read, and that I was sick. That was her, not me!

 One summer night on the eve of a family vacation, I was so excited I couldn't sleep. My step father gave me Soul on Ice to read. I was 10.

I wanted to be a veterinarian. I loved animals. But this was a war about control between my parents about controlling me. And I was getting battered and chewed up in the gears of the machine.

My parents were at war and when they fought out loud I was always glad, hoping they'd get divorced.

I was bored one day and my mother said said.  Paint your room, Van Gogh did.

At 12 she sent me to a nudist summer camp in Vermont for the summer. I am an introvert. I was horrified. 

I had two fathers neither of whom could protect me from my vicious demented mentally ill mother. 

Luckily I had grandparents Nat and Sophie of Brighton Beach Brooklyn and my spectacular grade-school and high school teachers adopted me, nurtured me and helped me run away in the nick of time.

******************************************* 

“If you are not a part of the solution, you are a part of the problem.”
― Eldridge Cleaver

“The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.”
― Eldridge Cleaver